Pages

January 20, 2008

Something Else #3 - What's All This?

As long as Led Zeppelin didn't wander off into 30-minute "improvisations" or (ugh) drum solos, their live stuff was often fantastic. Here's two songs in under five minutes from a January 9, 1970 show at the Royal Albert Hall: covers of Eddie Cochran's "C'mon Everybody" and "Somethin' Else".

This was going to be the first post in this non-baseball series (hence the name) before I wised up and rightly went with some '72 Stones. This clip (and much more from the 1970 gig) is on the 3-DVD LZ set released in 2003.

Here's Cochran himself doing bothsongs. He died in a traffic accident in 1960 at age 21.

14 comments:

I always thought Bonham's drum solo's were a great way to get the rest of the band an intermission on their monster long shows (compared to everyone else at the time). And heck, probably gave the three some great background music for what they were doing backstage. :-)

And it gave legendary status to Bonham who ended up playing 3-3.5 hours straight, with no break.

Ironic you should post this now. Just so happens that not once, but twice in the last week I've been channel surfing and come across a live Zeppelin show. Had no choice but to watch, even tho I've seen both multiple times. One was Song Remains The Same, the 73 tour. The other was just called Led Zeppelin Live. I believe, based on the clothes and the song selection, it was taped in 79. Page, along with Clapton, Hendrix, etc., replaced my baseball heros during the 70's and early 80's. I saw Zeppelin twice - 75 & 77. I had already made travel. arrangements to go to DC for the 80/81 tour - the dates had been announced but tickets weren't on sale yet - when Bonham died.

I was wondering how long it would be until personal concert memories turned up. I'm surprised it took 3 comments! :)

I saw them in 1977, on my 16th birthday.

The previous fall, I skipped school (and snuck into the city) to see The Song Remains The Same. It was a big thing to see the movie at the theatre near Rockefeller Center where it had opened. In those days only a few theatres had good sound systems.

A couple of years later, I did the same with The Last Waltz - which musically had a far greater impact on my life.

Fantastic clips - many thanks. You look at these guys ripping it up some 37+ years ago, and can't help but wonder if they had any idea at the moment as to how big they were going to be down the road...or were already, for that matter.

I never saw them live, with multiple viewings of TSRS during college serving as a tantalizing substitute for how magnificant the genuine article must have been. I read where more than 20 million people competed to purchase the 16,000 tickets that were available for the recent O2 gig in London. No wonder...

For those looking to round out their "live" Zep catalogues, I highly recommend "BBC Sessions", "How The West Was Won", and a lesser known but eminently sizzling "Jimmy Page with The Black Crowes/Live at The Greek" in LA.

Chris Robinson does a fairly decent job as Plant, but Page is absolutely scorching in a double-CD that is nothing but Zep covers.

Has anyone seen Lez Zeppelin, the all-female Zep tribute band? Haven't seen that one, but have seen Jazz is Dead - all jazz interpretations of Dead music.Very strange, but well done. The rendition of "Trucking" featuring nothing but the stand-up bass was awesome.What a long strange trip it's been :)

A Real Fuckin Idiot: "I was with Oakland when 9/11 happened, and I remember how devastating it was, and I just remember seeing everything about Rudy, how he would go visit the firefighters. ... he's always been a nice, genuine guy"

There's a reason why a SoSHer coined the phrase "dumber than a box of Damons".

There's a reason why a SoSHer coined the phrase "dumber than a box of Damons".

Late last season and again during the playoffs, I rolled my virtual eyes at a couple of comments by Papelbon. I said that it was too bad we now have to hear everything he has to say -- now that he's Famous. Someone wondered why I was being negative on him, but it's not so much Papelbon as it is the trend.

The objects of our fandom are like babies in that the period before they can really talk is in many ways the most charming. We can love them unapologetically early in their careers, safe in the illusion that they will always produce at their current level, and soothed by the fact that the young players are expected to refrain from talking too much. But that changes, and we have to learn their opinions on things. Later on they do things like jump to the Yankees for more money and talk about how great Guliani is.

Of course a time comes when we garner as much amusement from a player's conversation as from his production on the field, often in inverse proportion (ahem, Gerhrig38) to each other. That era of fandom has its pleasures, too, especially if the player turns out to be intelligent or at least clever. But nothing beats the first blush, when all you know about the player are his stats and his swagger and don't have the slightest idea he might be a Republican or something.